Many users depend on electronic mail (“email”) to send messages and share files. In some scenarios, users may add attachments to emails to share files with other users. Some attachments may be relatively small in size (e.g., less than 1 MB) whereas other attachments may be relatively large (e.g., greater than 5 MB). Given the size of most attachments, in addition to the fact that some users exchange a large number of emails per day, existing practices utilizing email attachments may demand a significant amount of communication and storage resources. This scenario presents budgetary and resource challenges for both large and small businesses.
In addition, the use of email attachments creates complex scenarios for users when it comes to version control of shared files. For instance, it may be difficult for some users to identify the most recent version of a document particularly when multiple users are communicating individual versions of the document on different email threads. To address some of the existing drawbacks created by the use of email attachments, some users share data by storing files on a central server and sharing links to the files. Although there are different systems for sharing files and messages, coordination between different systems may be cumbersome for users.